Question

You are a privacy officer for a health system and you are charged with ensuring Personal Health Information (PHI) used in the hospital and physician practices is kept private. Monthly you walk the halls of the hospital units and the physician clinics to ensure that PHI being adequately protected. Create a checklist of items to review during these privacy walks. Be sure that you include reviewing PHI in all different formats (electronic, paper, etc.). Think about the different areas of the hospital and clinics and what ways they may being using PHI, also pay attention to the location of PHI related to patients and visitors.

Answer 1

Personal Health Information is related to any information about a patient medical record or payment record that need to be protected in hospital records. It is purely private and can not be revealed without patient knowledge. The privacy officer should pay attention to the following checklist associated with the patient. In addition, organizations are responsible to present the PHI if asked by the patient. The checklist includes,

1.phone number and email address

2.account numbers

3.medical record reference numbers

4.Identification records including biometrics.

5.Names

6. Images especially related to patient medical conditions.

The privacy officer is responsible to check all the sources of data related to the patient PHI. The electronic data will be in protected mode and should be decoded to read it.